Re: An Open Letter to Oracle on the Topic Of Accessibility

[Brian Cameron <Brian Cameron Sun COM>]

Kenny/Eitan:

On 02/20/10 11:46 PM, Kenny Hitt wrote:
> I'm not sure I've made my point, but I'll send this and see the result.  I've tried to keep this nice and helpful when
> what I really want is to destroy the monitor of everyone on the Gnome board.  If you had to
> use the Gnome I amn forced to use, you wouldn't put up with it for a second.
> This mail was written on a Linux box in the text console.  Gnome 2.28 just isn't worth the frustration to try posting it under Gnome.

I can assure you that the GNOME Foundation board takes accessibility
seriously, and works hard to promote accessibility within the GNOME
community.  I appreciate your frustration, but I do not think destroying
any monitors will really help.

On 02/22/10 02:49 PM, Kenny Hitt wrote:
> Thank you.  You did a much better job than me at explaining the issue
> I have with Gnome accessibility.  If the Gnome board would only make
> a small policy change, accessibility would stop going backwards.

Policy decisions about how GNOME is released are made by the GNOME
release team, not the board.  The board works to be representative of
the wider GNOME Foundation community.  So, such policy changes tend to
be made when the wider GNOME community pushes for such changes, rather
than due to sweeping top-down directives from the board.

On 02/22/10 03:18 PM, Eitan Isaacson wrote:
> Accessibility is definitely seen as a priority by GNOME leadership. I
> agree with you that there needs to be more stringent rules for GNOME
> applications. I believe the folks to lobby regarding this are the
> release team, even though I know that they are also concerned about
> accessibility. What would be even better is if someone who is a11y
> oriented would join the release team. I think the new module inclusion
> process[1] should include formal a11y requirements. Accessibility
> should also find itself in the release schedule[2], just as i18n does.

Correct, proposals regarding making more stringent a11y rules for
release would be best discussed on the release-team mailing list:

  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/release-team

As you say, if more people with an a11y focus were to volunteer to
participate in release team process, this would likely be the most
effective way to influence change.

Brian